RIVER VIEW, CA—In a harrowing escape, local churchgoer Ryan Freedman careened across the fellowship hall and made a daring leap out of a second-story church window to avoid having to awkwardly hold hands with other church members in a prayer circle at a midweek Bible study, sources at First Avenue Baptist Church confirmed Thursday.

The man blasted through the glass barrier and hurtled toward the ground before landing in a patch of shrubbery, with no regard for his own safety.

“I’ve got an idea,” the associate pastor leading the study had said, according to witnesses. “Why don’t we all gather up in groups of five or six and join hands in little prayer circles and just pray for one another’s burdens?”

“Go on now, don’t be shy!” he added with a chuckle.

No sooner had the fateful words left his lips than Freedman jumped into action, vaulting over a table covered in refreshments and stale coffee as he sprinted for one of the fellowship hall’s windows, his closest path to freedom. The man pushed off the ground and threw his elbows forward to puncture the glass, and “just like that, he was gone.”

“It all happened so fast,” one witness told reporters. “He clearly had been ready for such a time as this.”

At publishing time, Freedman was spotted at another church’s midweek evening service, frantically looking for an exit as the pastor asked for volunteers for “a fun illustration.”

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